Carew targets Déise promotion

New Waterford football manager Niall Carew set his sights on getting promotion from Division 4.

The Kildare man is due to be ratified tonight in what has been seen as a coup for the Déise footballers.

Carew was a selector for Kildare under Kieran McGeeney since the Armagh man took over in 2008 but stepped down at the end of the season.

“Johnny Owens did a great job with the team and they unlucky not to stay in Division 3 when the were promoted,” Carew said last night.

“The target for me is to get a performance in each game. In the league we’re in you could win every game or lose every one by a point and with Kilkenny out there are no guarantees. But we’ll have to look at promotion.

“There are some big teams there. Look at Limerick. They were the better team when we met them with Kildare in qualifiers last year. Leitrim, Leitrim, Clare... there are no easy games.”

Carew is hoping to meet the players this weekend and put his backroom team in place.

But he confirmed he will pick two local selectors, preferably with a background in coaching.

“I will have a good back-up team,” he said.

“It’s going to be exciting and we’ll work hard to get the best out of players. I’ll be finalising the backroom team later in the week but I’ll wait until it is ratified first.

“Once that’s done we’ll start straight away. I’d hope to have large panel until after the McGrath Cup.”